Slide Show

Photos: One Year After Deepwater Horizon, Portraits of the Gulf Coast

A year after the devastating explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, the Gulf of Mexico is still reeling from the debilitating effects of the largest accidental oil spill in history. Photographer and CBS-affiliate videographer Jackson Fager traversed Louisiana’s coastline to document the seafaring men and women—shrimpers, fishermen, oystermen—many of whom have been stuck on dry land since the environmental tragedy. With a new fishing season on the horizon, Fager recalls the courage and perseverance that have kept them afloat for the past year.

I live in New Orleans and covered the oil spill last year, right after it happened. I joined some of those hardest hit by the tragedy, going out on the boats with the fishermen as they tried to contain the oil. As time went by, it just really seemed like no hope was in sight.

These fishermen remind me of American cowboys—among the most resilient and toughest individuals in the country. They think of themselves as a dying breed. Even before the oil spill, they were facing so many challenges—competition from overseas, hurricanes, fuel prices, and declining demand for their product. Then, when the oil spill happened, they were stripped of their very livelihood, their lifeblood. A lot of them have been out of work for the last year.

They’re such a unique collection of men and women from so many different ethnic backgrounds—Creole, Cajun, Native American, Vietnamese—and most of them are third- or fourth-generation fisherman. They’ve known no other way of life. What’s more, this is the only way of life they want to know. They’re also a people of many skills, out of necessity. If you want to be a commercial fisherman, you also have to be a carpenter, a plumber, and an electrician.

To spend time with them calls to mind an era when such seafarers were vital to the American economy. Most of them don’t have e-mail or cell phones. Theirs is a simple life of solitude out on the water, away from everything. They move at a different pace, disappearing in the Gulf for two to three weeks at a time and coming back with their catch. There is a richness to their lives. Their faces tell their story: one of hardship, commitment, and resolute focus.